Posted 9:43 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

September 1, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 1; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk

LENGTH: 1557 words

HEADLINE: On Ship of Condos, Life's an Endless Cruise

BYLINE: By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON

DATELINE: ABOARD THE WORLD, St. John's, Newfoundland, Aug. 31

BODY:
Life, they say, is a journey. But who would think to take it on a cruise ship?

Billed by its Norwegian owners as the world's first and only residence at sea, The World, a 12-deck, 43,000-ton, 644-foot passenger ship, arrived here today -- a floating condominium with apartments, not cabins, ranging in price from more than $2 million to more than $7 million. St. John's is one of 140 ports in 40 countries that the vessel is to visit in its inaugural year, the start of a perpetual circumnavigation of the globe -- a home away from home away from home.

The World was launched in March, sailing from Oslo, and is scheduled to arrive in New York on Thursday.

Residents are on the average in their middle 50's, and generally self-made, first-generation wealthy. The World is a concept that Howard Hughes would have loved: exile reinvented, a life in comfortable circumstances that cosset but also constantly change, leaving a wake but never a trail. More than a few on board could have been Mr. Hugheses of another generation -- their determined isolation as deep as the mid-Atlantic.

"People that take a risk like this, on a new concept, they're the kind of people I generally like anyway," said Richard Reed, 60, an entrepreneur who has run martial arts schools and a software company selling billing services to health clubs. "I'm not going to sit around and wait for this concept to work itself out -- test a few boats -- there's an urgency factor to it, and it's called age."

The World's accommodations consist of 110 two- to six-bedroom condominium apartments with kitchens, decorated by carriage-trade designers like Nina Campbell of London and Juan Pablo Molyneux of New York.

There are standard cruise ship amenities like restaurants, a casino and a spa. But there is also a corner store, Fredy's Deli, which sells Rice Krispies, oyster sauce, matzo balls and cake mixes.

Condominium maintenance fees are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but residents must scrub their own ovens, or pay extra to have them cleaned. The crystal table lamps are bolted to end tables, by regulation. Fireplaces and candles? Forget it. No pets either.

"We have to get along," said Geoffrey Thompson, 59, a retired advertising executive from Monterey, Calif., when asked about his neighbors on The World. "We share the same backyard." His backyard tilted from side to side in the horizon of his two-bedroom apartment's windows as he spoke, seated on a sedan-sized sofa. "There's more type A personalities on board per capita than anywhere else in the world," Mr. Thompson said. "No passive bones in the body."

The World was conceived in 1997 by Knut Kloster Jr., a Norwegian cruise ship magnate. The project was the butt of many jokes, even as The World proceeded into construction. Its size was scaled back at the boatyard, because of financing difficulties and concerns that it could not enter the smaller, more exclusive ports it was promising to prospective residents. The World, owned by ResidenSea Ltd., is registered in the Bahamas.

Eighty percent of the apartments, which have 50 year leaseholds -- the ship's expected life span -- have been sold. Plans for a sister ship have been put on hold until The World has sold completely.

Residents can board in any port and are asked, after an extended absence, to give 24-hours' notice. In fairer seas in more attractive locales, the ship expects an average of 340 people in residence, served by its crew of 320. Homeowners are at present 40 percent American, 40 percent European and 20 percent from South Africa, Australia and elsewhere. The ship also books nonresident passengers in its unsold apartments and 88 guest suites.

The apartments on The World are not being sold as investments, because of their expiring leaseholds.

"The clock started ticking the day the ship was delivered," said Jessica Estrada, the on-board sales manager. "It's a depreciating asset. It's a lifestyle, not a way to make money."

Sailing from Iceland to Newfoundland this week, a cold, lonely jog on The World's maiden Atlantic crossing, the oceans were bucking and the 100 passengers, including 15 residents, were the hard-core few.

Mr. Reed a silver-blond man who said he earned a black belt in martial arts in Korea with Chuck Norris, the action-movie star, was seated in his living room, which he had customized heavily to his own tastes. There was a black leather Harley-Davidson edition of Monopoly on the Chinese-style lacquered coffee table, an electronic Yamaha piano, a Russian impressionist oil painting of a bar scene and a flat-screen wall clock that displayed the earth and its time zones.

"On this side of this line is Wednesday and on the other side is Thursday," Mr. Reed said, pointing to the lit, blue panel. "You're on the move all the time and it's kind of hard to keep track of that."

In fact, several residents on board had trouble identifying the day.

Mr. Reed stows a telescope in his powder room. "You can't see the stars from land anymore," he said.

Residents are not permitted to claim The World as their primary residence, and must provide an address on land to ResidenSea when purchasing, which a company spokesman cited as proof that the ship is not being used as a tax haven.

Plans for security were not tightened after Sept. 11, though metal scanners are present for embarkation. ResidenSea officials said they would not sell to anyone with a criminal record. The company pays a security concern to perform international credit and criminal background checks on each condominium applicant.

Still, many residents, as if playing a game scheduled by the ship's "enrichment" director, are trying to figure out who among them might be on the lam, and why.

"Everybody's learning everybody's else's bio," Mr. Thompson said. "If the knowledge about somebody only goes back a few years, you kind of go, 'O.K., so where were they before that?' "

Mr. Reed also lives in a gated community, in Scottsdale, Ariz. He said that he never knew any of his neighbors there, a situation far different from life on The World.

"It's 600 by 100 feet -- you're going to run into them," he said.

Residents like Judy Kreiss, 60, and her husband, Norman Kreiss, 75, say they like the close-quarters' style of life.

"People who come to this life -- married couples -- really have to care about each other," said Mrs. Kreiss, who has been married for 10 years. The longest they have been aboard ship is two months. A framed photograph of one of their five dogs, Shorty, a terrier, sat on a shelf next to them. Shorty lives in San Diego.

"This isn't a life for people who aren't getting along, and so your neighbors are all people who have good marriages," Mrs. Kreiss said. "It's nice to have that reinforced all the time."

Mr. Thompson's wife, Karyn Planett, a travel writer, works with the ship's residents' committee. She said it was like a co-op board, but with many issues unique to a ship.

The group, which meets monthly, works with the company on the ship's itinerary, for example. Members have insisted on smaller, more interesting ports of call -- at Madagascar and in Londonderry, Ireland -- than short-term paying guests might prefer. But the company's bottom line is keeping the cabins full.

"They are owners of their apartments," said Rene Peter, the general manager on ship. "They don't run the company. They know as well what they bought into -- a certain space on the ship. The rest is all public space."

The World's developers say it is the precursor of what could become a new niche in the travel industry and in vacation-home real estate. Other residence ship projects that have been reported include the America World City, proposed by the World City Corporation with investors that include Westin Hotels and Resorts, and Freedom Ship, the barge-like craft proposed by Freedom Ship International, which anticipates 40,000 residents living on a 25-story ship. The Freedom Ship filed its business plan with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the spring. If the ship is approved and built as planned, it will be an $11 billion home with an airport, parks, a hospital, schools and factories.

With the cruise ship industry trying to recover from Sept. 11 and an industry recession generated late in the 1990's by overbuilding, the pressure to keep The World booked to capacity is strong. ResidenSea, based in Miami, is discounting its passenger fares and is aggressively marketing its empty apartments as rentals, from $1,800 to $5,460 a night.

Ms. Planett said that the residents were realists who understood The World's marketing challenges.

"The company has to be on a sound financial footing or we all suffer," she said. "So we know the reality of their need to fill the guest suites and to have itineraries that are attractive to sell. We like a traveler who buys into the concept, to see the world in a more leisurely pace than the standard cruise ship passenger."

She raised an obvious point, the spray flying past her $3 million apartment as it sailed below the southern tip of Greenland.

"If we're not happy, it's not going to work for anybody," she said. "But how to boycott? Do we do a rent strike? Rent strike to us means we'd be tied up in -- I don't know where. You pick a port."
http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos: Geoffrey Thompson, and his wife, Karyn Planett, top, in their $3 million condominium yesterday aboard The World as it was docked in St. John's, Newfoundland. The vessel has all the standard cruise ship amenities as well as a deli, staffed by Hermy Lubugan, left, and Lalaine Lebitania. (Photographs by Keith Gosse for The New York Times)(pg. 23); Condominiums cost as much as $7 million on The World, where there is real grass on the putting green. (Keith Gosse for The New York Times)(pg. 1)

Posted 9:41 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

September 1, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 2; Page 1; Column 2; Arts and Leisure Desk

LENGTH: 1629 words

HEADLINE: ART/ARCHITECTURE;
In a New Times Square, a Wink at Futures Past

BYLINE: By AVIS BERMAN; Avis Berman directs the oral history project of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.

BODY:
THE Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein liked to parody the modernist styles of his day. So it's altogether appropriate that five years after his death, he has given the new Times Square, with its sci-fi glass towers and Tomorrowland electronic signs, a monumental mural that harks back to a bygone future -- the future as it was evisioned in the machine age.

Even the helmeted head of Buck Rogers, that Depression-era space traveler, appears in "Times Square Subway Mural," a 6-foot-high, 53-foot-long panel that revisits the history of New York transportation. Made of porcelain enamel on steel, it has been hung in the mezzanine of the Times Square subway station, now being refurbished, between the shuttle to Grand Central Terminal and the northern entrance to the IRT platforms. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which commissioned the piece and will unveil it on Thursday, may rightly see the work as an emblem of a revitalized, forward-looking Times Square. But it's also a Lichtenstein sendup of modernist visions of the future.

"Roy talked about how unlike the prediction of the future the future really was," said Dorothy Lichtenstein, the artist's widow. To him, she said, "the forecasts of the future were always sleek and clean, while in reality, everything in a city is always pretty filthy and hard to keep up."

That Rogers appears in the mural, at the far right, as if straight out of a comic book from 1929 -- when he was first introduced, six years after Lichtenstein was born in Manhattan -- is telling. It underscores that the piece is not so much futuristic as it is retrospective and even nostalgic, evoking a between-the-wars Gotham, when the subways seemed undefiled and the city was being wrenched by industrial and architectural transitions.

Read from left to right, "Times Square Subway Mural" portrays a dynamic history of New York urbanism.

The first panel shows a portion of an arch patterned after the Guastavino vaulting in Grand Central; it is rendered to resemble tile and masonry, the materials of the 1904 subway. The next arch metamorphoses into a steel girder, distilling the Machine Age of the 1930's, when metal gained popularity as a symbol of modernism. Streaking through the arches is not a subway car but a winged spaceship, suavely streamlined in the period manner.

That technology would solve nearly all urban problems, or at least improve the quality of contemporary life, was the fervently promoted message of the 1939-40 World's Fair in Queens, which Lichtenstein visited as a boy. Balanced on the prow of the spaceship is an image of a white Trylon bisecting a red Perisphere, those iconic emblems of the fair and its "World of Tomorrow." The real Perisphere contained a model of a utopian city that would strike us as a green suburb, though Lichtenstein puts smokestacks and skyscrapers in the background of his retro-futuristic city. In the final segments, jazzy geometric forms lifted from his own paintings and sculptures stand in for buildings.

Lichtenstein was a prolific artist, but few people know that he also had a history as a muralist. He designed 11 murals, 10 of which were realized. The first, commissioned by the architect Philip Johnson for the 1964 New York World's Fair, was a single image of a red-haired flirt inspired by the heroines of romance comic books. The last, "Large Interior With Three Reflections," conceived in 1993 for the corporate headquarters of Revlon, is an intricate composition of three well-appointed interiors swirling in reflections, simulations of architecture and other perceptual tricks.

Although Lichtenstein's trademark style -- bright, crisp forms enclosed in hard black outlines that are legible at great distances -- seems tailor-made for mural formats, he was resistant to creating them. "He was never enthusiastic at the beginning," Mrs. Lichtenstein said, "because he was totally immersed in what he was working on, and he did not want to be distracted. He would only do the project if he could incorporate what he was working on."

Robert McKeever, a painter and photographer who worked for Lichtenstein from the early 1980's until his death in 1997, agreed. "He would mold the ideas he was working on to fit the mural commissions."

Yet, said Mr. McKeever, Lichtenstein was not as in thrall to the particulars of subject matter as might be thought. "What he was painting was almost immaterial to him," Mr. McKeever said. "The relationship of where things were to each other and how you perceive it were the most important parts of a composition. Whenever he had a new interest, he would stick it in a painting to see what would happen."

The murals not only turned into riffs on Lichtenstein's investigations into perception, but also indexes of his own preoccupations. (Lichtenstein's sources for "Times Square Subway Mural," as well as paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings connected with it, will be on view starting on Thursday at Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery on Madison Avenue.)

Two books that Lichtenstein owned and consulted for his iconography illuminate his thinking process. The first, Philip Ashforth Coppola's compendium on the New York subways, "Silver Connections" (1984), printed detailed drawings of the 1904 ornamentation of the 42nd Street station. Lichtenstein recreated some of these decorative elements in the mural, most conspicuously the classical plaques and mosaics and the number 42.

The second book was "Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years in the 25th Century" (1988), by Lorraine Dille Williams. In Ms. Williams's words, Buck Rogers "always seeks the utter fringes of the future without violating the laws of science that make future developments a reality."

Fittingly for a painter whose self-portrait consisted of an empty T-shirt with a blankly reflecting mirror above it, the only mural that he ever proposed, Mrs. Lichtenstein said, was one that was designed to disappear. In 1983, Lichtenstein and several assistants painted "Greene Street Mural," a composite of the artist's previous motifs on panels 18 feet high and 96 feet wide. After the piece was shown at Leo Castelli's gallery at 142 Greene Street, it was purposely painted over.

"There was a lot of conceptual art around," Mrs. Lichtenstein said, "so Roy wanted to do this as an impermanent piece of work that would be the exhibition, but not an object. His work was becoming very costly, and he loved the idea of doing something that couldn't be sold -- just erased." Ever ready to debunk, with the "Greene Street Mural" Lichtenstein undercut the precious nature of the art product.

In 1985 the Metropolitan Transportation Authority established the Arts for Transit office to incorporate works of art into the rebuilding of New York's subway and commuter rail stations. Since then, more than 120 commissions have been completed. The artists include Elizabeth Murray, Tom Otterness, Nancy Spero, Eric Fischl, Mary Miss, Faith Ringgold, Vincent Smith, Al Loving, Ellen Driscoll, Vito Acconci and Romare Bearden. Another 75 to 80 works are in progress, according to Sandra Bloodworth, the director of Arts for Transit.

By the time the Times Square subway mural came along, in 1989, Lichtenstein was at ease with the genre and "liked the challenge," Mrs. Lichtenstein said.

"Once he had done a number of murals, he realized that they could relate to what he was doing, and he liked the idea of having another one in New York City," she said. Lichtenstein's other mural in a public space in Manhattan is "Mural With Blue Brushstroke" (1984-85), in the lobby of the Equitable Center building at Seventh Avenue and 51st Street.

The M.T.A. offered Lichtenstein a budget of $200,000 to execute the commission. He refused all payment, stating that he "would gladly make it a donation to the city of New York." The money originally allotted to him went toward other art in the station. (Jack Beal, Jacob Lawrence and Toby Buonagurio also created permanent works for Times Square.)

The Times Square commission is a departure from how Lichtenstein customarily proceeded on murals, which was to combine and layer motifs of works he was in the process of making. There are reprises of favorite visual devices, like his Benday dots and quotations from his own and other art, but the subject matter is honed to its underground site.

Lichtenstein drew the core composition -- a full-scale black-and-white maquette -- in 1990, and followed it with color studies. These preliminary pieces can be seen at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. In 1992, the renovation of the Times Square station was postponed and, after two years elapsed, Lichtenstein decided to go ahead and transfer the preparatory works to enamel.

"The delay was so long," Mrs. Lichtenstein recalled, "that he just hated the idea that this thing was hanging on and wasn't completed, in his mind. He said: 'Let's just do it. Then I don't have to think about it anymore.' " Other than the hanging of the work in the station 10 days ago, the mural was executed under Lichtenstein's supervision and fabricated exactly as he specified.

In December 1989, Lichtenstein received the Mayor's Award of Honor for Art and Culture from Edward I. Koch. He told the assembled guests at Gracie Mansion, "I've always thought that New York was the center of the universe, so this award has cosmic significance for me."

Doubtless the installation of his mural -- a venture in which Lichtenstein revisited his past and made a gift to the future -- in an essential hub of his universe, would have been an even more splendid reward.

Times Square Subway Mural
Unveiling on Thursday.
Related exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Madison Avenue at 78th Street.
Thursday through Oct. 19.
http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: Photos: Roy Lichtenstein working on a collage for "Times Square Mural" in 1990, a year after the M.T.A. commissioned the work. (Bob Adelman/Roy Lichtenstein Foundation)(pg. 25); "Times Square Subway Mural," 1994, by Roy Lichtenstein. The work, 6 feet by 53 feet long, will be unveiled on Thursday. (Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Mitchell-Innes & Nash)(pg. 1)

Posted 10:10 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2000 Chattanooga Publishing Company
Chattanooga Times / Chattanooga Free Press
November 5, 2000, Sunday
SECTION: PERSPECTIVE; Pg. F1

LENGTH: 1453 words

HEADLINE: Poll-taking can be a tough call

BYLINE: John Aloysius Farrell The Boston Globe

BODY:


Call waiting. Caller ID. Answering machines. Computer modems. Cell phones. Home fax machines. Voice mail. Pushy telemarketers.

For most of us, they are conveniences or annoyances of modern life. For opinion pollsters, they can add up to big trouble. As the numbers and varieties of polls spiral, it's growing harder to get people to answer their questions, and harder to get accurate results.

"Response rates are not what they used to be," said pollster John Zogby, referring to the willingness of those called to participate in polls. "When I started in this business in 1984, they were averaging around 65 percent. Now we are down around 33 or 35 percent." Indeed, changes in technology and the attitude of Americans have lent an unexpected wrinkle to Campaign 2000: The science of measuring public opinion has come in for increased scrutiny and debate.

In recent weeks, several well-known polls have reported questionable shifts in public opinion, leaving pollsters self-critical and defensive and prompting what GOP pollster Ed Goeas called "the debate over polling." At least two major polling operations have had to adjust their techniques.

The controversy started in mid-September, when three respected polling operations announced dramatically different views of the presidential race.

A Sept. 15 Newsweek poll gave Vice President Al Gore a 14-point lead, while the bipartisan Voter.com-Battleground poll had Governor George W. Bush ahead of his rival by between 2 and 5 points. The CNN/USA Today/Gallup nightly tracking poll, meanwhile, was somewhere in the middle.

Newsweek subsequently adjusted its methodology by adding to the size of the polling sample. And Goeas, who conducts the Voter.com-Battleground poll with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, tinkered with the order of its questions, and acknowledged that they may have been using a sampling method more suited for the final days of the campaign, when opinions are firm, than for mid-September, when the situation is more fluid.

The flap over the campaign polls is more than just inside baseball. It is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon that could affect the American political, media, and marketing worlds in the years ahead.

At stake is the validity of polling as we know it, in which polling firms contact 250 to 500 respondents by telephone on a given night and ask them about their voting, shopping, or entertainment habits. Candidates, corporations and advertising agencies all rely on such random sampling to tell them what the public thinks.

Part of the challenge is technical: The increased number of voters who have caller ID, computer modems, and similar devices in their homes has made the polling business more complex, costly and difficult than ever. It used to take Republican pollster Frank Luntz three phone calls, on average, to reach a respondent. Now it takes six.

But there have been attitudinal changes as well. At the same time that they are tying up their phone lines with new equipment, Americans are showing growing impatience with intrusive telemarketers who want to sell them on long-distance service, a hot stock or a local charity. A call from a polling organization is not much more welcome.

Polls are no longer a novelty. People who might once have been flattered to be interviewed by a big news organization now see it as an imposition, especially at the end of a long, busy workday.

And so pollsters are getting more busy signals, recorded messages, and abrupt (and sometimes rude) goodbyes.

Regional differences further complicate the problem. A Midwestern state like Missouri or Iowa, for example, is a pollster's dream: Folks get in from the farm or factory at suppertime, join their families for dinner and show a native politeness to callers.

Texas is more difficult, notorious for its huge number of telephone answering machines. And New York is a nightmare. Known for being blunt if not downright surly, many New Yorkers work past dark, have a long commute and arrive home later each night, giving pollsters a narrow window to catch them before bedtime. On the three coasts, the number of non-English-speaking people only increases the difficulty of building a good sample.

As they grapple with such changes, pollsters are arguing about methodology. Democratic pollster Peter Hart, for instance, surveys registered voters until the final weeks of a campaign, when interest in the race peaks and he can better determine who are the highly prized "likely voters."

Goeas, on the other hand, thinks it is better to screen for the "likely voters" earlier in the race, particularly by discounting younger voters, who tend not to follow through on their intent to vote, and people who register in "motor-voter" drives, then don't show up on Election Day.

Though 60 percent of young voters tell pollsters that they intend to vote, only 33 percent cast a ballot, said Goeas. "By allowing more of those young voters into your sample you are going to see more volatility."

Goeas prefers to poll only on weeknights, because busy suburban families are more likely to be out of the house on weekends, tilting weekend results toward the Democrats.

"On weekends you get a more Democratic, blue-collar sample. You are under-reporting Republicans, especially married voters," said Goeas. "Quite frankly, a mother who will take 20 minutes on a weekend to talk to a pollster is not a normal person."

When Zogby took the temperature of the New York Senate race recently, he found Hillary Clinton leading Representative Rick Lazio 48 to 44 percent with a whopping 71 to 23 percent advantage among an important minority that always turns out at the polls: New York's Jewish voters.

But Goeas challenged the accuracy of the poll because Zogby did his polling over the Rosh Hashana weekend, the Jewish New Year. The Republican pollster claimed that the most Orthodox Jewish voters -- cultural conservatives who were more likely to vote Republican -- were observing the High Holy Days and unlikely to respond to a pollster's phone calls.

Because Orthodox Jews were underrepresented, Goeas asserted, the Zogby results must be skewed, and Lazio is in better shape than he seems.

Not so, said Zogby: His firm had made adjustments in its methodology to correct for Rosh Hashana. It is Goeas whose polls are out of kilter for refusing to poll on weekends, when Democrats are more likely to be home, Zogby said.

"I've also heard you don't poll in East Texas on Wednesdays because everyone is at the Assembly of God Church. And that you don't call Manhattan in July because everyone is in the Hamptons," Zogby said, dismissing Goeas's theory with a chuckle. "I put not polling on Rosh Hashana in that category."

Given time and money, said Zogby, pollsters have shown great skill at compensating for regional, technical, and attitudinal changes.

"Has it made it impossible to do our job? No," he said. "You can overcome these difficulties. We are not in a crisis situation."

Still, not every client has time and money to spend on a thorough survey. To feed the voracious demand of the media, some polling firms are rushing into the field on a tight budget, relying on smaller or poorly screened samples and sacrificing accuracy, said Luntz, the GOP pollster.

The media, always looking for the most dramatic results, then compound the problem by hyping the polls that show the widest margins or shifts of opinion, instead of averaging the various polls to find a norm.

"The use of polls in this election cycle is completely and totally out of control," Luntz said.

The closeness of this year's presidential race, says Hart, has served to magnify the differences among the polls.

Even the best poll has a 3- to 5-point margin of error, Hart noted. So a poll giving Bush a 2- or 3-point lead can be just as accurate as another poll giving Gore a 2- or 3-point lead the very same night. Declaring that either candidate has seized momentum on the basis of one night's tracking is foolhardy, said Hart, who warned the public: "Don't fall into that trap."

Goeas noted there were also wide disparities among the polls during the 1996 campaign, but they weren't as noticeable because they all agreed on the overall trend: Bill Clinton was running well ahead of Republican Bob Dole.

In the 2000 campaign, the trend is that Gore and Bush are running neck and neck. A swing of a few points can put one or another in the lead -- changing the face of the race -- and so differences are magnified.

The good news is that, as voters reach decisions and pollsters identify and question "likely" voters, "it all becomes more reliable as you move toward the election," Goeas said.

Posted 10:10 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company The New York Times View Related Topics September 28, 2000, Thursday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 27; Column 1; Editorial Desk LENGTH: 724 words HEADLINE: Essay; The Wild Poll Pendulum BYLINE: By WILLIAM SAFIRE DATELINE: WASHINGTON BODY: Are you getting the feeling, as I am, that we are being jerked around by wildly swinging poll numbers? Pre-conventions, George W. Bush led by 17 points; post-conventions, Al Gore took the lead. Last week most major polls had Gore breezing to victory; this week, it's Bush edging him out. With every swing of the poll pendulum, media coverage changes to savage the front-runner. Similarly, whoever is in "free fall" can do nothing right -- until a "surge" by the formerly collapsing campaign restores smugness at headquarters. Is the American majority really switching every few days? Did Gore's Kiss change tens of millions of minds? This week The Washington Times headlined "Bush Surges Ahead of Gore After Chats With Oprah and Regis." Was a 13-point lead in the previous, wacky, Newsweek poll really all but erased by a Bush counter smooch on Oprah's cheek? No. The reasons for the unprecedented swings, and for the reporting that further exaggerates the swings, are (1) the pressured pollution of the public opinion polls, and (2) the horse-race media's hyping of polls as predictors of voting behavior. Have you noticed, in all the breathless reports of poll results as if they were reflections of coming reality, the disappearance of a category that used to be called "the undecideds"? If one of the candidates is reported leading by 44 percent to 42, that means 14 percent are determinedly undecided or pulling for splinter parties. And that is after "pushing." Because client news organizations in hot competition demand a hard answer to "who's winning?" the pressure is on pollsters not to take "I dunno" for an answer. The pollster pushes: "Which candidate do you lean toward today?" If the interviewee had just been impressed by a powderpuff TV interview, he or she will reluctantly "lean" toward whoever seems hotter on the Internet or in cable talk or whose name is more familiar. The poll then counts that person as taking a side. Next day, the same type of person's soft leaning could easily switch and would appear as a change of mind. It is not; what is reported as a "surge" is merely a sample of wavering out loud. Another reason for the seeming voter volatility is the social unacceptability of appearing uninformed. Many people who are unwilling to commit before the debates toss out a name to avoid appearing apathetic or unpatriotic. Sometimes pollsters will assuage their media clients' demands for results by means of allocation. If one candidate is ahead in a poll by 45 percent to 40, and 15 percent haven't made up their minds, a poll may allocate the uncommitted on the ratio of decided respondents, thereby exaggerating the front-runner's lead. The word "respondent" sends shudders through the nose-counting community. The dirty secret of political surveys is this: As recently as 1984, the response rate to pollsters' questioning was 65 percent; that is, two out of three people reached would answer. Pollster friends whisper to me that the response rate is now down to 35 percent. (Two out of three pollsters I called went mum or hung up on me, thus validating this reported figure in my mind, which never leaves margin for error.) What does this remarkable response refusal tell us? It means that two out of three Americans are guarding their privacy with answering machines or Caller ID, or are telling pollsters to "stop bothering me at dinnertime." Also, because we suspect that a response puts our private opinions on a telemarketer's data base, we are now much less likely to cooperate with pollsters. The one-third of potential interviewees who do respond are either the aforementioned pushables or people eager to make their views known: partisans, activists and the committed. Together, these are not representative of all likely voters and ignore the widespread indecision. All major polls in the 1996 election underestimated support for Bob Dole, the New York Times/CBS poll by 7 percent, affecting media coverage and voter turnout. Only the maverick, Zogby/Reuter, came in on the money. So I called John Zogby and laid on him my irate view of the abuse of polling. He in turn gave me this insight: "Since 1998, we have evidence that voters are more likely to reject the views of all pundits." Why do I need to know that? "If you want to help Bush -- attack him." http://www.nytimes.com LOAD-DATE: September 28, 2000

Posted 12:23 PM by Nathan
***
"God, help us! Help us right now!"
Dramatic rescue from Coppermine house fire
Northern News Services

By Nathan VanderKlippe

Coppermine (Sep 02/02) - Robert Ayalik was outside his house Friday evening when
a neighbour came by with startling news: a house down the street was spewing
smoke.

Ayalik walked over to see what was happening. Smoke was coming out of Roy
Havioyak's house. Sitting on the steps to the house was Havioyak's wife, Alice
Kokak, covered in soot and grime.

She was rocking back and forth, saying, "Roy's in there, Roy's in
there."

Flames began to erupt from the front porch of the house.

Knowing Havioyak's chances of surviving for long inside the house were slim,
Ayalik entered through a side door where it wasn't so smoky.

He called out and heard a weak voice calling back from the kitchen.

"I'm here," said Havioyak.

Ayalik took a deep breath and began crawling through the black clouds. Unable to
see more than a few inches, he bumped into household items as he went through
the burning home.

By chance he stumbled upon Havioyak and tried to drag him from the kitchen while
still crawling, but couldn't muster the power to move him far.

Out of oxygen, Ayalik put his nose to the floor and inhaled a chestful of smoky
air. Then he stood up and dragged Havioyak, who was now unconscious. He wasn't
certain he could find the way out.

"Given that there was so much smoke and everything, I had my eyes
closed," said Ayalik. "I was bumping into the walls. That was scary.
Then I found my way out to the entrance that I had entered through."

Teetering on the edge of consciousness himself, Ayalik dropped Havioyak on the
ground outside.

Ayalik's mother Alice, who had also arrived at the scene, noticed that Havioyak
had stopped breathing, and began pumping his chest.

Fearful that he might die under her watch, she began praying in a loud voice.

"God, help us! Help us right now! Help us immediately!" she yelled in
Innuinaqtun.

In the meantime, Robert Ayalik had regained his senses enough to begin
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Soon after, Havioyak began breathing again. By this time - around 6:45 p.m. -
fire crews had begun arriving with two pumpers and two water trucks, each
carrying about 2,000 gallons of water. In total, about 20 men helped work on the
fire, which was under control within about 15 minutes.

Havioyak was taken to the health centre for treatment of smoke inhalation.
Ayalik took a shower to clean off the soot, then joined Havioyak at the health
centre.

"They were lucky to save the house," said Edward Dupont, the fire
chief. "The fire was very intense when we got there."

Havioyak is reported to be in good condition now. Ayalik said he doesn't feel
like a hero for saving his neighbour.

"I'm humbled that I was able to be used this way to pull out Roy," he
said. "And I'm sure other people would have done the same thing if I wasn't
there."

According to Dupont, Havioyak had been in the front porch earlier that evening,
drinking and heating knives on a hot plate. But the hot plate was left
unattended, and the resulting blaze caused about $65,000 in damage to the house.
-30-

Posted 11:37 AM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

July 29, 2002, Monday, Late Edition - Final
Correction Appended

SECTION: Section E;Page 1;Column 2;The Arts/Cultural Desk

LENGTH: 1368 words

HEADLINE: George Washington: Mr. Excitement?;
Mount Vernon, Alarmed by Fading Knowledge, Seeks to Pep Up His Image

BYLINE: By STEPHEN KINZER

DATELINE: MOUNT VERNON, Va.

BODY:
Say goodbye to the stern and remote George Washington, the boring one who wore a powdered wig, had wooden teeth and always told the truth. Embrace instead the action hero of the 18th century, a swashbuckling warrior who survived wild adventures, led brilliant military campaigns, directed spy rings and fell in love with his best friend's wife.

That is the new message from the people who run Mount Vernon, the estate where Washington spent much of his life and where more than one million people now go each year to learn about him. Stirred to action by what they say is an appalling decline in what visitors know about Washington, they have embarked on a radical course. Their goal is to reposition the father of the country for a new era. Among the tools they plan to use are holograms, computer imagery, surround-sound audio programs and a live-action film made by Steven Spielberg's production company. The film may be shown in a theater equipped with seats that rumble and pipes that shoot battlefield smoke into the audience.

"We used to be so discreet that we didn't want to display Washington's dentures," said James C. Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon. "When we finally broke down and showed them, they turned out to be a sensation. That taught us something."

The new plans have stirred some critics to warn that Washington is being transformed into a "G.I. George" and Mount Vernon into "MTV Vernon." But perhaps more tellingly, they have won support from many scholars who are in a state of near panic after watching Washington all but disappear from the national consciousness in the space of a single generation.

"When teachers and curriculum planners and textbook authors look at the founding fathers today, they see too many white males," said David W. Saxe, a professor of education at Pennsylvania State University who studies American history textbooks. "George Washington is dissipating from the textbooks. He's still mentioned, but you don't spend a week in February talking about him, doing plays and reciting the farewell address. In the interest of being inclusive, material about women and minorities is taking the place of material about the founders of our country."

Professor Saxe called Mount Vernon's solution drastic but said he had put aside his concerns.

"What they're doing is sorely needed," he said. "They aren't overdoing it because you can't overdo it."

George Washington's stately, columned mansion sits on a rolling 500-acre tract overlooking the Potomac River.

The estate and its immediate grounds have been owned since 1858 by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, which has earned a reputation much like Washington's own: conservative, staid and remote.

For more than a century, directors of Mount Vernon concentrated on the limited mission of preserving Washington's home and explaining his interest in farming. The rest of his life, they could safely assume, was being fully taught in classrooms.

Over the last few years, however, several studies at Mount Vernon and elsewhere have made clear that this assumption is no longer valid. Fewer people than ever seem to know that Washington was a frontier surveyor who fought Indians and by his mid-20's was already one of the most famous people in North America. Nor do they realize that he shaped a ragtag band of farmers into an army that won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention and, as first president of the new United States, whipped 13 reluctant colonies into a union destined to become one of the world's most influential nations.

"He did something about an apple tree," said Jackie Whaley, an 18-year-old high school student from Texas who visited Mount Vernon on a recent morning.

Her friend Jenny DeStefano offered an answer. "He cut it down," she said.

Not so long ago Washington's portrait hung in countless classrooms, his birthday was a separate national holiday, and his exploits and achievements were taught in almost every elementary and secondary school. Today the portraits are gone and the birthday (along with Lincoln's) has morphed into Presidents' Day.

By comparing textbooks used in the 1960's with those of today, researchers at Mount Vernon have concluded that Washington is now accorded just 10 percent of the space he had then.

A recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that while 99 percent of students at 55 top universities could identify the cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-Head and 98 percent knew the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, just 42 percent could name Washington as the man who was called "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen." More than three-quarters of those universities do not require a single course in American history.

And although several best-selling books have awakened new interest in the Revolutionary generation, Washington has not been among the beneficiaries.

"Our idea now is to find ways to show that he was the most robust man of action you can imagine," Mr. Rees said. "We're going to use film, sound, lights and every other technique we can think of."

Asked about the criticism that this approach cheapens Washington's memory, Mr. Rees replied: "We tend to hear that from traditionalists, who I don't think grasp the true difficulty of the challenge. If they'd spent 18 years here like I have, trying to reach not just the minds but also the hearts of eighth graders, they would realize that this is an uphill battle."

A new complex planned for Mount Vernon, now in the design stage, will have three buildings, two of them below ground. The third will be behind a grove of trees and not visible from the mansion. Visitors will enter the complex through an orientation center, where they will see Mr. Spielberg's 15-minute film. Mr. Rees said he hoped it would portray Washington as a figure with all the brilliance and bravery of Indiana Jones.

There is also to be an education center with galleries devoted to Washington's military and presidential careers and a museum with a display of artifacts.

Mount Vernon has raised about two-thirds of the $85 million it is seeking for the new $50 million complex and the educational programs associated with it, as well as to supplement Mount Vernon's endowment. The largest single gift has been $15 million from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation in Las Vegas. There will also be a building named for either Henry Ford or the Ford Motor Company, another large contributor.

Mr. Rees is inviting teachers to Mount Vernon and showing them new ways to deal with Washington. He says he hopes to develop a computer-aided learning package that will ultimately be used by every fifth grader in the United States.

The turn toward show business at Mount Vernon could not be expected to go unchallenged, but protests have been surprisingly muted. Many scholars seem ready to try anything to rescue Washington from creeping obscurity.

"The attempt to put him in a celebrity package is probably the last thing he'd ever approve," said the historian Joseph J. Ellis, who is writing a biography of Washington. "But I recognize that there's an audience out there that needs to know about him and can only be reached by devices that are a little off-putting."

Academic trends have so strongly encouraged the teaching of history from social and cultural perspectives, some scholars say, that little attention is now given to leaders who headed governments, won wars or established nations.

"There's a tendency to downplay the importance of the individual, and it has hurt Washington," said Peter R. Henriques, a history professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and member of a board of scholars advising Mount Vernon administrators on the new project. "I don't think it's hero worship to recognize that he was supreme among the group of founders who helped bring about this country."

"But let's face it," Professor Henriques added, "he was an 18th-century elitist slaveholder, and that doesn't fit in well with the modern age. We're in an age when white male heroes on horseback are not so popular."

http://www.nytimes.com

CORRECTION-DATE: August 10, 2002, Saturday

CORRECTION:
A credit was omitted in The Arts on July 29 for a mural shown with an article about efforts to enliven the displays about George Washington at Mount Vernon, his estate in Virginia. The painting, showing Washington as a surveyor, is by Byron Peck.

GRAPHIC: Photos: Marcella Bickle, visiting from California, samples the traditional at Mount Vernon. The estate hopes to attract young people with a higher-tech approach. (Susana Raab for The New York Times)(pg. E1); Katie Pohlmann, an interpreter at Mount Vernon, at a spot on the estate where an addition is planned. (Susana Raab for The New York Times); George Washington at Kips Bay, where he tried to rally his troops, putting himself in peril. (Culver Pictures)(pg. E3)

Posted 2:28 PM by Nathan
Chicago Tribune
Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune

Date: Friday, August 2, 2002
Edition: North Sports Final
Section: Metro Page: 6 Zone: N
Source: By Darlene Gavron Stevens, Tribune staff reporter.
Illustration: PHOTO

Catholics build a `parish' without walls on Net
Spurred by the abuse scandal, an informal network of Web essayists has sprung up, offering a safe place to debate and celebrate their faith


They call it St. Blog's Parish, but there are no weekly masses, no altar or pews.

The only requirements to join are a computer, Internet access and a desire to vent about the Roman Catholic Church.

Each of the estimated 85 members in this unofficial cyberspace network has a "blog," or Web log, an online diary complete with links and reader feedback that is updated daily--commonly through a free Internet program.

Launched earlier this year amid the growing sex abuse controversy in the church, the "parish" has provided a safe place to heal, debate and celebrate the Catholic faith through daily essays and news links, according to bloggers from Toronto to Tinley Park.

"When it got to the dozen point, and we had a priest, choir director and a cathechist blogging, I started calling it St. Blog's Parish," said Kathy Shaidle of Toronto, one of the first Catholic bloggers.

The blogosphere, as the blog world is called, has been around for about eight years, and topics are as varied as people's interests. The trend began to blossom when Internet blog sites made starting one nearly as simple as opening an e-mail account.

The look and feel of the Catholic blogs vary according to the blogger's personality and computer savvy, but many rely heavily on typed musings, with links to interesting Web sites and news articles sprinkled throughout.

Amy Welborn, the Ft. Wayne, Ind.-based author of the "In Between Naps" blog, is known for posting baby pictures and photos from family trips--but also for news bulletins. She recently used her site to point out discrepancies in headlines about the pope's health.

Shaidle's boisterous "Relapsed Catholic" blog is peppered with personality. "I share a lot of conservative views, but I'm not married and I live in Canada's biggest gay neighborhood even though I'm not gay," she said. "I'm not Sister Mary Holy Card."

Peter Nixon, a California health-care consultant, named his blog "Sursum Corda" after a part of the mass when the priest urges worshipers to lift up their hearts.

"I wanted the site to be a place where people could lift up their hearts when their hearts were kind of heavy," he said. "I try to be reflective about spiritual struggles I have had."



Current events fuel activity

The community was even more active in recent weeks, with the Voice of the Faithful laity conference in Boston and the pope's North American trip dominating discussion. The bloggers say they intend to keep tabs on the abuse scandal and the controversial issues it has stirred.

St. Blog's fills a niche by creating a community that isn't available in traditional parishes, said Douglas E. Cowan, assistant professor of religious studies and sociology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

"It's a platform for people who feel that they have something important to say, but until now could only say it to the people around them," said Cowan, who co-edited the book "Religion on the Internet." Blogging is "different from chats because these are carefully thought-out messages. These people are investing quite a bit of time."

The trend has its detractors, including Christopher Shannon, associate director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame.

"A virtual parish is not a parish," said Shannon, adding that he is skeptical about any impact the Catholic bloggers might have on future scandal debate.

"If parish life is going to mean anything, it has to be people meeting, face to face," Shannon said. "The idea of creating a virtual parish will only increase the fragmentation of community in the church. There's something unnatural about it."



Two worlds come together

Cowan acknowledged that Catholic blogs might be threatening to some religious leaders, or dismissed by those who think that religion and the Internet don't mix.

"Those voices are getting fewer and fewer," Cowan said. "With the exception of pornography, religion is about the most popular thing on the Web.... More people are using the Net as a venue in religious practice."

Nixon said he agrees in part with Shannon, noting that he posts ideas he would not necessarily share at his parish. But he considers that a positive.

"Some parishes have offered forums, but not everyone is comfortable with that," he said. "On a blog, you can talk about a whole range of things."

Shaidle, 38, a self-professed "Vatican II baby," started her blog in 2000, when she was a religion columnist for the Toronto Star. She is now a contributing editor to the Toronto diocesan newspaper.

If St. Blog's perishes, she says, it will be because of boredom, not controversy. At the peak of the scandal, when her blog was a magnet for debate, Shaidle estimated that it went from 200 hits a month to 12,000. Now it has dropped to about 9,000.

Some blogs lose readers if they don't post every day--or if they are too long-winded or overly negative, she said.

"We tell each other if we sense someone is going off the deep end," Shaidle said. "If you rant, you lose an audience."

Offering a special perspective in St. Blog's is Steve Mattson, whose "In Formation" blog delivers daily reflections on his life as a second-year student at Mundelein Seminary.

"The reason I added my voice into the mix was partly because of the criticism of seminaries," said Mattson, 40, who is studying to become a priest for Michigan's Lansing diocese. "These are difficult times. Maybe what I have to say can help others.... Maybe we can get the church to a better place."

One of St. Blog's resident philosophers is Karl Schudt of Tinley Park, whose "Summa Contra Mundum" blog was named in tribute to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Athanasius.

Schudt, a doctor of philosophy who has taught at Mundelein and Marquette University, describes himself as a "church nerd," someone with Vatican II documents on his bookshelf. Schudt once took on the topic of female priests by writing an essay titled, "Is God Sexist?"

"I try to be the opposite of a Cafeteria Catholic," Schudt said. "I'm a philosopher, so I make arguments."

St. Blog's has seen its share of battles, but for the most part the debate stays civil and can even be therapeutic, said Welborn, a columnist for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service.

On one particularly bad day, she got a letter from a blogger who said, "Let me tell you about a very good priest."

It helped her and other bloggers see that "it's not all that bad," Welborn said. "The church is prevailing."



Memo: RELIGION.

Captions: PHOTO: Karl Schudt of Tinley Park, a member of "St. Blog's Parish," fills a Web log, or "blog," with daily thoughts on church-related issues. Tribune photo by Scott Strazzante.

Tag: 0208020074

Keywords:

RELIGION TECHNOLOGY

Posted 1:13 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse for the promiscuously curious
Friday-Sunday, August 23-25
Previous Reader

ALAN BERNSTEIN, Houston Chronicle
Some Houston charities and nonprofits are facing a new ethical issue -- what to do about at least $63,000 they received from Andrew Fastow's family charitable foundation. The federal government says the former Enron chief financial officer filled the tax-free foundation with fraudlently obtained funds. But the money that the foundation contributed to charities has already been spent, on good causes. So what's a charity to do, now that the government considers the source to be tainted? Disregard the controversy? Refund a matching amount to defrauded Enron stockholders, employees or the government? Wait for a court order? "We have never been in this situation before, and it is something our board will have to look at," John Havard, president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, said Thursday.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1545610

Kyung M. Song, The Seattle Times
The two sheets of paper that unexpectedly cut short Tom Krolik's 22-year Boeing career were handed to him together. One said his performance ranked in the bottom 30 percent of his work group. The other said he was going to be laid off. Krolik, 54, worked in Everett as a liaison to companies that install seats and other components on Boeing jetliners. When he found out all the others in his work group who got layoff notices were in their 50s, he became suspicious. Now, 10 months after Boeing began eliminating 30,000 jobs, a group of former nonunion workers is preparing to file a class-action age-discrimination lawsuit. They allege Boeing's controversial retention-rating system was used to weed out older, better-paid employees.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134520070_boeingage230.html

Brigid Schulte, Washington Post
This is the girlhood dream of Maria Reyes, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants who work long hours at Floors Inc.: to win a scholarship. To become a pediatrician. This is the hard reality: She failed two English and two math classes in middle school, got grades of "mostly C's and E's" and landed in the summer Jump Start program at Wheaton High School in Montgomery County because her record flags her as "at risk." As in, a 14-year-old at risk of giving up and dropping out of school altogether. That's why, when classes start next week, Wheaton, Montgomery Blair, Einstein and Kennedy high schools -- struggling urban schools with high numbers of students who may have no idea what it takes to make a dream become real -- will open ninth-grade academies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51544-2002Aug22.html

The Miami Herald
Stanley Goldenberg crouched in the hallway at 16922 SW 119th Ct. in South Miami-Dade. He was one of the nation's leading hurricane researchers, and also a father, and he felt responsible for his three sons, his sister-in-law, his brother-in-law, three nephews and a kitten.It was 4:45 a.m. Monday, Aug. 24, 1992. Hurricane Andrew was inside his house. In the spirit of scientific inquiry and to leave behind a record, Goldenberg turned on his video camera. The scene was ghostly, illuminated only by flashlight, orchestrated by the percussive cacophony of a house deconstructing around a family.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/andrew/3886314.htm

TERRY WEBER, Canada Globe and Mail
After being hammered with one of the worst droughts in recent memory, farmers in Western Canada will face one of the region's poorest growing seasons on record, with wheat production hitting its lowest level in 28 years, Statistics Canada said Friday. Data culled from interviews with farmers in from July 26 to Aug. 2 suggests total wheat production this year will drop 25 per cent to 15.4 million tonnes. That's the lowest level since 1974 and compares to 20.6 million tonnes produced lasts year. ... The situation — described by Canada Wheat Board officials as "a real tragedy" — has prompted farmers in other regions of the country to send help to their western counterparts to feed their animals. According to Friday's report, total barley production is expected to fall to its lowest point in 34 years, while the canola crop will reach only about one-half of its annual average over the past decade.
http://globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews...

Steve Wieberg, USA Today
Early in every game, the public address announcer reminds fans that the Little League World Series is "the world's greatest youth sporting event." The ballparks are intimate and immaculate. Admission is free. Hot dogs go for $1.25. And most appealingly, 11- and 12-year-olds are playing their hearts out on the field — as they did most notably in Louisville's 11-inning, 2-1 thriller against Fort Worth, on Wednesday. It's a reasonable claim ... if you can shut out the memory of cheating and forfeits from a year ago; the protests lodged against Harlem, N.Y., all-stars this year; the encroachment of corporate sponsors and the sight of TV satellite dishes and production trucks screaming BIG EVENT. As the 56th World Series enters Saturday's U.S. and international finals and Sunday night's championship game — brought to you by ABC — there are some who wonder: What hath Little League wrought?
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/llws/2002-08-22-cover-llws_x.htm

Mark Oliver, London Guardian
The discovery of Titian's £5m stolen masterpiece, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, has been a cause for celebration in the art world after it was revealed yesterday that it had been found safe in a plastic bag. But there are many more important works that have been lost or stolen that are still missing. This list of notable missing works has been compiled by the Art Loss Register, which is based in London.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,779797,00.html

Dave Ford, San Fransisco Chronicle
Flowers and fire: the perfect combination? Absolutely, according to Paul Cesewski and Jenne Giles, San Francisco fabricators -- that is, tradespeople who work with metal -- and their tech- whiz cohort, Rudy Rucker. The three have created nine 16- to 20-foot galvanized steel flowers that, arranged pentagonally in a 6,000-square-foot area, can sporadically shoot flames 15 feet into the night sky. So where would such an ambitious art piece find the space it needs and an audience sure to dig its psychedelic essence? Why, at that brilliant commingling of art zaniness and fealty to fire: the Burning Man festival.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/23/WB76423.DTL

Virginia Hefferman, Slate
So far, this has been a marvelous, melancholy season of Sex and the City, in which the women have stayed close to home, excepting one field trip to Atlantic City, and I've been with them for every plucky minute. The show's themes now seem less consumerist (less hay is made of shoes), and its jokes are less strident. The actresses now exhibit the self-aware playfulness of Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable in How To Marry a Millionaire (1953). The effect of Sex and the City, like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is dizzying, with its heroine always improvising, harmlessly stumbling, and then suddenly getting very lucky—which is true to anyone's youth in a city. You work way too hard for many things and then every now and then you get something—like maybe a glass of wine—free! Carrie has a way with serendipity, and she has good eyes for communicating: "How'm I doing?"
http://slate.msn.com//?id=2069889

Back to Notebook

Posted 9:51 AM by Nathan
By Nathan Bierma
August 21, 2002

Is there life after death? Philosophers have mused for centuries, but their puzzle lacked one piece: Elvis.

Elvis' posthumous vitality--25 years after (spoiler alert) he actually died at his home in Graceland--is evident in the flesh of impersonators, in endless memorabilia emblazeoned with his visage, and, Tuesday night, on Navy Pier's Skyline Stage in the 25th Anniversary Elvis Spectacular.

Ironically, Elvis lives today as he never would have had his life cycle proceeded normally, reincarnated in the sequined jumpsuits of countless impersonators--or, as the five who starred in Tuesday's show prefer to be called, "Elvis perfomers."

"I like the imitators better than the original. They're younger, in better shape, and still have his voice.," says Tim Dalton, 66, who attended the show with his wife Grace. The couple catches Elvis shows in Las Vegas twice a year, and Tim preserves the soul of the King in oil portraits he paints at his Chicago home. "If he were alive today," he says, "we wouldn't be here."

Other celebrities leave legacies, but only Elvis is said to still walk among us mortals. Which is what he did, so it seemed, at Janet Treuhaft's wedding ten years ago, where a man framed in the unmistakable chin-length sideburns and pompadour hairdo prompted whispers as he quietly mingled among the guests, then took to the stage as the evening's surprise entertainment. It was the first wedding gig for Chicago Elvis performer Joe Tirrito, and Treuhaft and her husband John Conlisk were at the Skyline Stage show Tuesday to see Tirrito perform and commemorate their 10th anniversary.

"The funny thing is, it gives you goosebumps when he says hello. You can't believe he knows your name," said Treuhaft, as though ratpured by an encounter with a ghost.

Torrito was the most passionate persona Tuesday night, and Travis Morris, with his broad, youthful facial features and flying knees, the most convincing facsimile. But no one embodies Elvis like Rick Saucedo, who at 46 is four years older than Elvis was when he died and seems to be a living continuance--he often performs with Elvis' old band. The Vegas veteran commanded the stage and shook the crowd with standard classics such as "Blue Suade Shoes."

After Saucedo, the event's organizer, Chicago's Mark Hussman, was almost anti-climactic. Hussman, a full-time Elvis performer who moved his show to Navy Pier after a five-year run at the House of Blues, is still digging out from a barrage of e-mails he received after being featured on AOL's welcome screen on the 25th anniversary of Elvis' death last week. His Midwestern brand of warmth and grit, albeit with an un-Presleyan stiffness, adds another layer to Elvis' strange merger of Vegas glitz and bluegrass simplicity.

And if Saucedo is the king of Kings, it is Hussman who speaks most eerily of Elvis' spirituality. Dedicating "Love Me Tender," he pointed upward, saying solemnly, "We're going to do this one for Elvis," and held his gaze heavenward.

"He was very spiritual," Hussman said afterward. "I think he was blessed by God."

The divine imagery was consistent throughout the night, as each of the resurrected Kings knelt down to grant stageside fans a touch on the hand or kiss on the cheek, the clamoring crowd oddly desperate to be touched by an angel.

"Elvis has left the building," announced Al Dvorin Tuesday at the end of Tuesday's show, just as he always did as Elvis' announcer and tour manager. How wrong he is.

This mere mortal, whose last No. 1 hit in the United Kingdom came just two months ago, has passed before our eyes into eternal life. Let the philosophers commence their ruminating on the fate of the soul. Let Dalton, the local painter, begin.

"He's going to live forever," he said. "We'll be long gone, and he'll still be here."

Posted 2:26 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse for the promiscuously curious
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
Yesterday's Reader

SHELIA M. POOLE, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One man is African-American. The other, a Korean-American. They sat side by side recently in the Friendship Room at the Providence Missionary Baptist Church on Benjamin E. Mays Drive to hammer out details of a project that would have seemed far-fetched a decade ago. But the Rev. Gerald Durley, a senior pastor at the church, and Sunny K. Park, a prominent Atlanta businessman, have high hopes that their planned venture -- getting Korean business owners to mentor black, would-be entrepreneurs -- can help their two communities overcome years of animosity and mistrust.
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/atlanta_world/0802/21park.html

The Charlotte Observer
When Moody's Investor Services downgraded North Carolina's Wall Street bond rating one notch Monday, no one was surprised. Moody's, one of three major national rating firms, had advised the state a year ago that its financial condition risked a drop in the state's long-cherished AAA rating, the highest level for bonds issued by the state.
The AAA rating meant two things for decades: North Carolina's fiscal house was in good order, and because of the best credit rating, the state's taxpayers paid lower interest rates when the state borrowed money. The new rating of Aa1 means taxpayers will pay added costs of from $7 million to $15 million a year -- not a huge difference, but still significant.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/3905687.htm

The Economist
SIR MARTIN SORRELL, chief executive of WPP, one of the world’s largest advertising groups, is known and respected for his caution. So it was on Tuesday August 20th, when he predicted little or no improvement this year in the amount spent on advertising. The industry may have to wait until 2004—the year of blockbuster events such as the Athens Olympics and American presidential elections—for any real recovery. The sharp decline in share prices in recent months had not only wiped billions off investors’ savings, he said; it had also reduced the chances that advertising expenditure would grow again. Sobering as Sir Martin’s remarks were, they should come as no surprise.
http://www.economist.co.uk/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1290404

Leef Smith, Washington Post
A record-tying string of heat-charged days of 95 degrees or higher, which ended Monday, has earned August 2002 a place in the record books. The last time the thermometer soared to these brutal highs and lingered for eight days in a row was July 1993. Before that, it was July 1987. Already this summer, temperatures in the Washington area have hit the 90-degree mark 49 times. The average for 90-degree days in a single year is 37. If estimates hold true, National Weather Service forecasters say this could become the third-hottest August on record.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42217-2002Aug20.html

Deutsche World
For generations, France's perfumers have created new scents by measuring raw essences, blending them, taking a whiff, and readjusting the ingredients until finally, all the substances merged into the perfect scent. What magical contents precisely go into the small bottle is the largest trade secret of any perfume creator - just as heavily guarded as the detailed make-up of Coca Cola. The European Union, however, wants to shed some light on this secret. And the perfume industry is up in arms. According to a new EU directive, consumers should not only be able to smell what scents are in perfumes and cosmetics, they should have definite knowledge of the contents before they purchase a product. The move is aimed to prevent the spread of allergies through the expensive fragrances, the EU says.
http://dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1431_A_614453_1_A,00.html

Katherine Monk, Vancouver Sun
Rachel Roberts is the talk of Hollywood -- but there's a catch: She's not supposed to talk about it. Sworn to secrecy two years ago when she signed on to take the role of a computer-generated character whose virtual talents salvage the career of a down-and-out director (played by Academy Award winner Al Pacino) when his lead starlet walks off the set, Roberts has been living under wigs and shaded behind sunglasses, unable to take on high-profile modelling gigs until the release of the film.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.asp?id={1639C78F-BCE3-4B63-A623-F2A660C23520}
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Posted 2:55 PM by Nathan
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
July 21, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 4; Page 13; Column 1; Editorial Desk

LENGTH: 964 words
HEADLINE: Stocks Are Only Part of the Story
BYLINE: By Alan S. Blinder; Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is a professor of economics at Princeton.
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J.

BODY:
King Canute could not command the tides, and apparently neither George W. Bush nor Alan Greenspan can command the stock market. In recent days, both the M.B.A. president and the oracular Federal Reserve chairman have tried to calm the markets with reassuring words about the economy. But the stock market has kept on falling: on Friday it had one of its worst days ever, losing 390 points. Since President Bush addressed Wall Street July 9, the Dow Jones industrial average has declined more than 10 percent, to its lowest level in almost four years.

Those who get their economic news from television may come away with the impression that the economy and the stock market are two sides of the same coin. If the market is heading south, then the economy must be, too. But it's not true. The United States economy is most emphatically not falling right now. The stock market may be the TV star. But it is the economy that generates the jobs and puts the food on our tables. And fortunately, the economy is doing much better than the market. If you want to bolster your confidence, turn off your TV and drive to the mall.

Normally, the economy and the market move consistently, though certainly not in lock step. The reasons are clear. A strong economy generates high and rising corporate profits, which is the traditional basis for high stock values. A rising stock market also gives the economy a boost by creating wealth for consumers and by making it easier for firms to raise capital, both of which were major factors in the boom of the 1990's. When things turn downward, all these mechanisms get reversed: a sagging economy drags profits and stock prices down, and a sagging stock market slows the economy.

Finally, because investors are supposed to look forward, the stock market should be a leading indicator of where the economy is going. And it is -- to a limited extent.

But while it is normal for the economy and the markets to move together, the two sometimes go their separate ways. For example, the Dow fell almost as much, in percentage terms, on a single day in October 1987 than it has in the entire recent bear market. But the economy kept growing strongly. It was such behavior that led to the economist Paul Samuelson's famous quip that the stock market has forecast nine of the last five recessions.

So it would be a mistake to interpret the stock market's current woes as a forecast of a double-dip recession -- a mistake that Alan Greenspan is certainly not making.

Consumers are spending, the housing market remains buoyant, and even business investment is coming back. The economic indicators are simply not signaling a sick economy. The gross domestic product grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter of this year, and something like 2.5 percent is expected for the second quarter. (The Commerce Department will announce the final figures at the end of the month.) That would clock the average growth for the first half at 4.3 percent -- not bad. The Federal Reserve expects growth of about 3 percent in the second half of this year, and the consensus among private forecasters is a bit higher.

It is true that economic forecasting is an imprecise science, to say the least. But it is far more accurate than market forecasting, which is basically impossible. And economic forecasts like this, coming from a wide variety of sources inside and outside government, should give us some comfort that the economy is heading uphill.

So why, then, is the stock market in shambles? While the market never tells you why it does what it does, it's unlikely that worries about the economy are weighing it down. Instead, the best guess is that the stream of scandalous corporate revelations is taking a heavy toll on stock prices, and investors fear there is more to come. Confidence in the earnings reports of American companies, not to mention the ratings of the analysts who follow them, has been damaged if not destroyed.

The key question is whether this illness will be confined to the stock market or spread to the larger economy. If the stock market destroys enough wealth, or if the depressive psychology infects the credit markets, the financial turmoil could become severe enough to damage the economy. The tail could drag down the dog. That is why we must stop the market's downward spiral.

But how? Words, if chosen artfully, may help a bit. But talk is cheap -- which may be why the markets shrugged off even the reassuring words of Mr. Greenspan, their most trusted guru. This just may be one of those moments when both the markets and the body politic are calling for action, some of which must be government action.

Can it be true that financial markets want the government to regulate them more? Paradoxically, the answer is yes. The markets have long had an ambivalent attitude toward government intervention. When things go well, they want to be left alone. But when things start to fall apart, they want Washington's help.

The reaction to President Bush's recent speeches was instructive. If Wall Street were truly opposed to government help, one might have thought that market participants would have breathed a sigh of relief: the president spoke loudly but carried a small stick. Instead, stock prices tanked.

There is a message here. Congress hears it, and even Mr. Greenspan -- who is not normally a proponent of government regulation -- hears it. But does President Bush hear it? The message is this: While changes in private-sector behavior will eventually fix many of today's accounting and corporate governance problems, the markets are clamoring for decisive government actions now.

Speeches have not worked. It is time to see if actions will speak louder than words.

http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Drawing (Milan Trenc)

Posted 2:47 PM by Nathan
NBIERMA.COM NOTEBOOK READER
A daily digest of noteworthy public discourse
Tuesday, August 20, 2002
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Steven Thomma, Philadelphia Inquirer
Women are poised to take over a record number of governors' offices this year. With strong candidates from Hawaii to Rhode Island, women are good bets to emerge from November elections holding as many as 10 of the 50 governorships, twice the five they now control. Long-shot victories in any of an additional six states could push that number even higher.As governors, women would become the dominant political power brokers in their states. Gaining statehouses would give them a breakthrough in an area of U.S. politics where they have lagged. They have made greater inroads in Congress, where women hold 13 of 100 Senate seats and 60 of 435 seats in the House of Representatives. A growing roster of women governors would increase the chance that the country might get its first female president. Americans tend to look to the executive experience of governors when choosing new presidents, not to the legislative experience of members of Congress. President Bush and three other of the last five presidents – Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – proved themselves as governors first.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/3888853.htm

Donna Cansfield, Toronto Star
No matter who they are or where they come from, we give students the programs and services they need to learn and succeed in school. This is our job and we do it well, better than any other large, diverse urban school board in the world. We are the largest school board in Canada and the fourth largest in North America. We serve almost 300,000 students in 560 schools. ... One can argue that other cities have similar challenges to Toronto; no one can argue we have more. More causes Toronto to be extremely expensive in comparison with any other jurisdiction in Ontario. One real estate study this year puts the average price of a standard two-storey home in Ottawa at $212,240 but, in Toronto, this type of home averages $327,624. Hidden costs like insurance, vehicle repair, school repair, renovation or building all escalate in Toronto. ... Toronto has always been different from its neighbours. Not better but decidedly different. The funding model must reflect this reality and serve the needs of Toronto's students so they can achieve and succeed in school.
http://www.torontostar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer...

David Mendell and Darnell Little, Chicago Tribune
The economic boom of the 1990s bypassed poor minority communities in the city, as many predominantly black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides remained mired in poverty as deeply entrenched as a decade earlier, according to 2000 census data released Tuesday. ... The income stagnation that plagued many Chicago neighborhoods is all the more worrisome to demographers and economists because they had hoped the unprecedented economic expansion of the 1990s would lift many people out of poverty. If people remained incredibly poor after the robust 1990s, they asked, what will become of them through the present bleak economy? ... Experts said various social and economic factors played into regional and race disparities. Geographic isolation from suburban jobs, a beleaguered school system and economic disinvestment have left many impoverished Chicago neighborhoods struggling decade after decade, with little hope for the future.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0208200185aug20.story
The Economist
THE optimists were wrong. Those misled by the American economy's spectacular rebound in the early months of this year were sure that the worst was over. At one point it looked as if America's economy had grown at a blistering 6% annualised rate in the first quarter, and that last year's recession was the mildest on record. Betting types decided that the next move in interest rates—in America and other industrial economies—would be up. John Maynard Keynes once remarked that "when the facts change, I change my mind": and both have been changing rapidly of late. ... What's happening to the American economy is, of course, the key to prospective policy changes not just in Washington but around the globe. The world's largest economy is still the only potential engine of world economic growth: Japan is struggling to recover from its fourth recession in a decade, and Europe's sluggish performance even during the boom years of the 1990s has constantly fallen short of expectations. Now America, too, faces an uncertain economic outlook.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1289545

BY DANIEL EISENBERG, Time magazine
Discount pioneer Southwest is readying its first transcontinental flights, from Baltimore, Md., to Los Angeles, starting this fall, while New York City-based upstart JetBlue is adding more flights on the West Coast and in Florida. These and other discount carriers today account for 20% of domestic air travel, up from 10% in 1992.
So why haven't American, United, US Airways and the three other full-service carriers, which lost $11 billion last year and stand to lose an additional $5 billion this year, followed the lead of the profitable discounters by cutting costs and fares? Because that's not the way their business works. They have made, and lost, their money by providing the frequent departures, quick connections, spacious seats and other amenities that have been demanded by business flyers and charging them dearly for that service — more than five times the cost of a discount fare.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101020826-338602,00.html

ALAN RIDING, New York Times
FLORENCE — With the statue of David never without a crowd of worshipers at the Galleria dell'Accademia, it could be said that every year is a Michelangelo year in Florence. But thanks to three exhibitions here this summer, il Divino, as Michelangelo is known to Italian devotees, seems more present than ever. In spirit at least. In reality, taken together, the three shows display fewer than a score of drawings and only a handful of sculptures that are confidently attributed to him.
http://nytimes.com/2002/08/20/arts/design/20MICH.html

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